Consensual Sex App Good2Go Has Been Shut Down

When Good2Go launched last month, I tested it out and concluded that it was impractical (who wants to fill out a four-minute horniness/sobriety quiz before having sex?) and insecure (the app kept a database with sexual consent records that could be accessible by law enforcement). I wasn't alone in calling it “even scarier than talking about sex”; the College Fix deemed it “worse than nothing,” and one college student interviewed on Today said it was “a buzzkill.” Now, less than two weeks after launch, Apple has pulled the app from its store, citing a portion of its guidelines for developers that prohibits apps that “present excessively objectionable or crude content.” Good2Go creator Lee Ann Allman told me that while Apple didn’t provide many details about its decision to remove the app, “they did say it was not deemed to be crude.” So: objectionable.

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In light of Apple’s decision, Allman decided to remove the app from Google’s app store and shut down its website. She hopes to relaunch it in the spring as a purely educational tool—no registration screens, no data captured by the app—that schools can use to have conversations with students about affirmative consent. Allman says she’s speaking with campus sex ed experts about how to proceed and will soon launch a discussion board on the app’s website to solicit ideas from the public—an attempt to leverage criticism of the app into a better Good2Go 2.0. “The scrutiny was … interesting,” Allman told me. “I’m glad we did it, and I’m really excited about the next chapter.” This time, she says, “it won’t be a quick process.”

Amanda Hess is a David Carr fellow at the New York Times. Follow her on Twitter.